After the odd false start post university, I'd managed to land a job with P & O. P & O, or, more properly, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, was a British shipping company based in London. At that time it was supposedly the largest shipping company in the world. I was to join a few other 'student princes' as a Management Trainee. After about a year in Head Office learning the ropes, we would be sent to work in one of the overseas branches. There were, we were told, three possibilities - Bombay, Hong Kong or Japan. You could do a full tour of duty (could be as long as 3 years) in any one of these three, or you could do a year or two in one and then get transferred to one of the others.
A student prince was a graduate entrant. These were the days when industry was only just beginning to employ graduates, and looking back on it I think one reason we were packed off overseas is that P & O really weren't sure quite what to do with us. After all we were pretty useless compared with a contemporary who had immersed himself (female executives hadn't been heard of in those days) in the shipping world from the age of 18. If we were safely ensconced thousands of miles away we could be given a little authority without causing too much offence, and could then swan back to London as a great authority on Asian trade.
Looking back on it, I would have been fired long before anywhere near completing that one year in London. We weren't going to be there long enough to get stuck into a real job, so all we did was look over people's shoulders - the 'people' were mostly middle-aged men who seemed to find it difficult to explain what they were doing or why. It was frightfully boring - for us, I mean - although some of the old codgers looked pretty bored too.... But luckily during just my second week, as I was yawning my way through a file winningly entitled "Far East - Persian Gulf Conference liftings by discharge port" or some such, I was summoned to the boss's office and told to pack my bags. Somebody had resigned in Calcutta, and, after a bit of re-jigging I was needed in Japan - just as soon as I could get a work visa.
That really concentrated the mind. Now that the time had come, did I really want to go? Japan was a country I knew virtually nothing about: Hong Kong was British and India had been, and English was (I assumed) widely used in both, whereas in Japan they just used those little squiggles to write with, didn't they? "You'll love it when you get there", opined the middle-aged manager, grabbing back his precious file. "All you expats do is sit around the pool in the country club, occasionally saying hullo to a ship's captain - the real work is done by London, of course." He suddenly seemed quite human - or was he just glad to see the back of me?
A few days later, clutching my precious visa, I was at Heathrow, checking in for the BA Tokyo flight with a young chap, John Farmer, who was also headed for P & O Japan; he was no student prince, and although little older than me, he gave the impression of having knocked around a bit. The flight was uneventful until part of a wing fell off: my theory was that we had gently scraped the top of one of Hong Kong's skyscrapers as we made that very hairy landing at the old airport there. Anyway we were stuck until they fixed it. The practical John said we'd better tell our colleague in Tokyo that we were delayed. He and his wife went off to try to do that while I managed to spend a fascinating hour wandering around the crowded colourful streets behind the airport. Apart from the blinding heat and the poverty all I can clearly remember is seeing a very old Chinese man coming out of a crumbling apartment block wearing pyjamas and carrying a bird in a cage. My first look at Asia! My gosh, I thought, if this is so-called British Hong Kong (of course I saw no other European in my wanderings) what can Japan be like?
To find out, see the next amazing episode!
A student prince was a graduate entrant. These were the days when industry was only just beginning to employ graduates, and looking back on it I think one reason we were packed off overseas is that P & O really weren't sure quite what to do with us. After all we were pretty useless compared with a contemporary who had immersed himself (female executives hadn't been heard of in those days) in the shipping world from the age of 18. If we were safely ensconced thousands of miles away we could be given a little authority without causing too much offence, and could then swan back to London as a great authority on Asian trade.
Looking back on it, I would have been fired long before anywhere near completing that one year in London. We weren't going to be there long enough to get stuck into a real job, so all we did was look over people's shoulders - the 'people' were mostly middle-aged men who seemed to find it difficult to explain what they were doing or why. It was frightfully boring - for us, I mean - although some of the old codgers looked pretty bored too.... But luckily during just my second week, as I was yawning my way through a file winningly entitled "Far East - Persian Gulf Conference liftings by discharge port" or some such, I was summoned to the boss's office and told to pack my bags. Somebody had resigned in Calcutta, and, after a bit of re-jigging I was needed in Japan - just as soon as I could get a work visa.
That really concentrated the mind. Now that the time had come, did I really want to go? Japan was a country I knew virtually nothing about: Hong Kong was British and India had been, and English was (I assumed) widely used in both, whereas in Japan they just used those little squiggles to write with, didn't they? "You'll love it when you get there", opined the middle-aged manager, grabbing back his precious file. "All you expats do is sit around the pool in the country club, occasionally saying hullo to a ship's captain - the real work is done by London, of course." He suddenly seemed quite human - or was he just glad to see the back of me?
A few days later, clutching my precious visa, I was at Heathrow, checking in for the BA Tokyo flight with a young chap, John Farmer, who was also headed for P & O Japan; he was no student prince, and although little older than me, he gave the impression of having knocked around a bit. The flight was uneventful until part of a wing fell off: my theory was that we had gently scraped the top of one of Hong Kong's skyscrapers as we made that very hairy landing at the old airport there. Anyway we were stuck until they fixed it. The practical John said we'd better tell our colleague in Tokyo that we were delayed. He and his wife went off to try to do that while I managed to spend a fascinating hour wandering around the crowded colourful streets behind the airport. Apart from the blinding heat and the poverty all I can clearly remember is seeing a very old Chinese man coming out of a crumbling apartment block wearing pyjamas and carrying a bird in a cage. My first look at Asia! My gosh, I thought, if this is so-called British Hong Kong (of course I saw no other European in my wanderings) what can Japan be like?
To find out, see the next amazing episode!
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